A couple of weeks ago, California’s Senate and Assembly appropriations committees determined which bills should move forward and which should be held this year based on estimated costs to the state.
The committees’ work took on an additional layer of importance this year due to California’s $12 billion-plus budget deficit. As these bills now head to their respective floors for a full vote before shifting to the opposite chamber, here’s a look at some of the top hospital issues for the remaining three months of the legislative session:
- Maternity Care
- CHA-supported Senate Bill 32, which would require health plans to meet new state standards for time and distance accessibility for perinatal hospital care, has cleared the Senate and is headed to the Assembly.
- CHA-opposed Assembly Bill 1386, which would have required every general acute care hospital to have a labor & delivery unit, was held and will not advance this year.
- Insurer Accountability
- CHA-supported Senate Bill 530, which would make permanent existing Medi-Cal network adequacy and timely access standards, has cleared the Senate and is headed to the Assembly.
- CHA-supported Assembly Bill 510, which would have required any appeal or grievance of a health plan’s denial or modification of a medically necessary service to be reviewed by a physician within two business days, was held and will not advance this year.
- CHA-supported Senate Bill 306, which would prohibit a health plan from imposing prior authorizations on a covered service for one year for certain conditions, has cleared the Senate and is headed to the Assembly.
- Other
- CHA-opposed Senate Bill 596, which would define an on-call list as at least 10% of a hospital’s registered nurse staff for daily work availability, cleared the Senate and is headed to the Assembly.
- CHA-opposed Senate Bill 632, which would create a series of workers’ compensation rebuttable presumptions for hospital employees for a variety of infectious and respiratory diseases, cleared the Senate and is headed to the Assembly.
- CHA-opposed Assembly Bill 1415, which would expand the authority of the Office of Health Care Affordability to single out hospital and health systems for differential treatment, has passed the Assembly and is headed to the Senate Health Committee.
This year, much focus and energy has been devoted to state and federal budgets, where CHA is working to stave off Medicaid (Medi-Cal) cuts in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C. The bills noted above represent just a small sample of the many other issues on which CHA is engaging this year on behalf of hospitals.
Stay tuned for how you can help via our online action center, and check the status of any bill, at any time, organized by topic, through our bill tracker.
We’ll continue to keep you posted of key events as these pieces wend through the Legislature.
